The glory of Games is fraught with risk

Spotlight of 2008 Olympics, shining on China's triumphant revival, also a bull's-eye for protests

BEIJING — If you want to understand how important -- how unusually important -- the coming year is to China, ask a historian.

When was the last time that China was as confident, prosperous and engaged with the world as it is likely to be at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

"About 1,300 years ago," said Wang Xiaofu, a history professor at Beijing University.

The dawn of 2008 opens an extraordinary period in China's rise that is likely to thrust the nation into a greater role in world affairs than at any time in recent history. But this moment of potential also carries enormous risk: 2008 is likely to test China's fragile economic boom, its tolerance of free expression, and its willingness to pursue peace or confrontation abroad.

After centuries of turmoil, poverty and isolation, China has reason to see today as a landmark. It enters 2008 after lifting more people out of poverty in less time than any civilization in history. It is home to the planet's fastest-growing major economy, an interstate highway system on pace to outstrip its counterpart in the U.S., a brand-new national arts complex that is double the size of the Kennedy Center. Its astronauts are months away from their first scheduled space walk.

The showcase for that revival will be the Olympics, for which the Chinese government expects to spend $40 billion -- four times the cost of the most recent games. Beijing has razed and rebuilt neighborhoods older than the United States and blitzed city dwellers with English lessons. It has trained half a million volunteers to help herd visitors -- one volunteer for every foreigner expected to attend, according to one count.

The games have been engineered for maximum exposure. The opening ceremony on Aug. 8, or 8/08/08, falls on a particularly pleasing day for the Chinese audience, because the number 8 sounds like "prosper" in Chinese. (American broadcasters also wanted to keep it early enough on the calendar to avoid competition with fall sports in the U.S.) The games are hotly anticipated among ordinary Chinese who, by and large, see it as a collective triumph -- a rare cause for unity in a nation divided by class, ethnicity and opportunity.

But with 20,000 foreign journalists expected to be on hand, critics at home and abroad are also getting ready to use the occasion as a chance to amplify pressure on China. In a preview of what to expect, six foreign activists were detained and released last August for unfurling a massive banner on the Great Wall. Their slogan adapted the Beijing Olympic motto -- "One world, one dream" -- to call for a "Free Tibet."

Organizers face a dilemma: Clamp down too hard on protesters, and images will be beamed around the world showing foreign guests crushed by a one-party state. But let rallies grow too far on sacred political ground such as Tiananmen Square, and authorities risk emboldening wider unrest. In particular, the government will have to rely on street cops to differentiate between peaceful protesters and security threats.

"A lot of tough security measures are being developed to combat terrorism, and these people run the risk of being considered terrorists," said Jia Qingguo, vice dean of the Beijing University School of International Studies.

The politicizing of the Games

Chinese leaders warn that the Games should not be politicized. But they have done so themselves, as in 2001, when Liu Jingmin, a vice president of Beijing's Olympic bid committee, argued that awarding China the games "will help the development of human rights." Recalling that prediction, Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists separately warned this year that China has failed to fulfill pledges it made in order to secure the games. "In fact," wrote Paul Steiger, chairman of the journalists committee, "since the games were awarded, media restrictions ordered by the government and the Communist Party have grown."

Domestic critics are not missing the opportunity to be heard.

"I want to show that it's not only the hope of the international community, but also the hope of Chinese people to improve their human-rights situation," said Liu Xiaobo, co-author of an open letter signed by 40 intellectuals and dissidents and posted on the Internet in August, urging Chinese leaders to do more to fulfill its rights commitments.

Protests, however, could be overshadowed if Beijing runs into trouble with another land mine on the 2008 calendar: elections in Taiwan. As the island, considered a breakaway province by the mainland, prepares for balloting next year, pro-independence politicians are already scoring political points at home by making strident gestures toward independence. They are emboldened by the belief that Beijing will do anything to avoid confrontation before the Olympics.